Butterflies, Bathtubs & Thumbs

Butterflies. Bathtubs. Thumbs. Three completely unrelated words, right? In the word realm I doubt this trio of letter bodies hang around at the same parties. Yet yesterday, as I was surrounded by 125 children, aged 3-8, these three words hung in the air side-by-side as the precious kids shouted out things they were thankful for. As the campus pastor at Christian Faith School, it’s kind of my ‘job’ to teach kids about God, but more times than not, I’m humbled by the pure wisdom that pops so naturally out of the mouth of babes.

I don’t wake up every morning thanking God for butterflies or thumbs. Gotta say, the indoor plumbing is frequently a prayer shout out, especially on cold winter mornings. But butterflies and thumbs? I’m not sure I ever thanked God for those, and yet what these two represent are powerful. These energetic kids are on to something.

What would we do without thumbs? Seriously, think about it. Until you’ve taped your thumbs back and tried to go about your day for a bit, I don’t think you can truly appreciate the genius of an opposable thumb. You won’t get much further than using that indoor plumbing we’re so thankful for to understand what I’m talking about it. Try it. I triple dog dare you. I guarantee your gratitude will abound.

Thankfulness is a powerful force. But as we whirl about our lives, masterfully adulting with packed schedules, relational and financial stresses abounding (and I’m not even going to pull on the thread of political and social insanity stacking up out there), it’s so easy to neglect thankfulness in our lives. But it’s the very thing that can rescue us all. From our own selfishness, entitlement, racism, and judgement.

And then there’s the butterflies, beautifully fluttering around, decorating our spring and summer skies with splashes of color. God didn’t need to do that. I’m sure our food chain would’ve survived these millions of years sans the Lepidoptera rhopalocera. But God is an exquisite interior designer with a desire for extreme and gorgeous details. Just like a passionate lover intricately building the home for his soon-to-be wife, God wanted everything to be perfect. For you. For me. That’s how much He adores us.

Today, stop and look around you. Observe. Breathe. And thank God for every moment. Put aside your adulting, your stress, your worries. Take on the mind of a child and thank Him for all the little things, which really are the big things, that are all around you. Your life. Your family and friends. Your church. Thank Him for the fact you are blessed to be able to eat indoors today. Thank Him for this electronic device and double that thankfulness by trying to use it without your thumbs.

And thank Him for the blessing of butterflies. After all, if He cared so much to grant us the simple beauty of butterflies, how much more will He take care of our every need?

From 60 to 0 in .03 seconds FLAT

Adrenaline highs can make you feel invincible…like you can do anything. And I was most definitely still on an adrenaline high on January 24th. In the past month, I’d launched my very first website, marketed and relaunched the 2nd edition of the Caged No More book, and joined a whirlwind team of marketers to help our movie experience a very successful opening weekend in the Seattle area. 

Each one of these events represented 100s of hours of creativity and hard work. And with a family of a husband and three elementary girls, in addition to my job teaching at Christian Faith Center, I was feeling very proud of myself as I’d navigated through the last several weeks. Yes, I was EXHAUSTED, but it was a good kind of exhaustion. It felt like a job well done.

So when my friend invited me to hop on the hoverboard, I thought “Why not?!” I’d already successfully tried riding it several days prior…shoot, by now I was sure I’d be able to innately be able to do figure 8s, right? Adrenaline can trick you. It pretends it’s your friend as it convinces you of unrealistic abilities you don’t have…that you’ve never had! So I jumped on and started hovering…

Before I even knew I was falling, my head slammed into the ground. No worries! My BFF, Adrenaline, helped me to jump right up, laugh it off, and tell everyone that I was good to go. But it was not long before I realized I was not good to go; in fact, I didn’t even have the proper capacity to drive myself home. I had given myself a concussion, and that was that.

For the next several days, I was sentenced to complete inactivity. No computers. No texting. No television. No driving. No working out. No reading by any manner. Just be horizontal and try not to fall out of bed from the dizziness...which was way harder than it sounded. It felt like I was living on a cruise ship rocking in perpetually stormy waters. Even now, after 3 weeks, I'm still dealing with dizziness on an almost daily basis.

This was the WORST POSSIBLE TIME (as if any kind of injury comes alongside a gift of convenience); so many loose ends from the last several weeks were begging to be tied up. But there would be no tying…only lying and lots of staring. And lots of thinking and contemplation. After possibly the busiest season in my life, my world had officially come to a screeching halt.

While I do not believe God causes injuries like this to happen, I am convinced He uses these circumstances to His advantage. And while I lay there, unable to do anything but reflect, He joined that reflection by holding up a mirror to my heart so I could see how addicted I had become to my friend, Adrenaline. How “proud of myself” I’d become. Not of the things like the book and the movie; I was well aware that those were solely God’s achievements. But I had grown proud of my activity, of my work, of all the tasks I’d been able to check off these last several weeks. I felt more valuable somehow. I felt like I was better than I'd been before. Like, maybe God valued me more than ever because of how awesome I'd been.

God loves it when we work hard and then sit back and appreciate our accomplishments. Didn’t He Himself do this on the 7th day? But appreciating our works, and finding our value in our works are two totally different motivations. He’s a jealous and wise Father, and He only wants us to find our value in HIM, not in our own ability to accomplish and achieve in this transient earth walk.

I wish I could tell you that my concussed state helped me to have a remarkable turn-around. That from this moment on, I will never again allow myself to reach for the instant gratification that pride and adrenaline offer, and will instead always dig deeper to find my value in my relationship with Christ. I know myself too well to make that boast.

But here IS what I will take away from this experience: From this day forward, I’ll try my very, very best to seek God first…First, to show me when I’m looking to other shinier things to find my value. First, to confirm which tasks are the ones HE wants me to accomplish. First, to hear HIS applause and not man's. And finally, First, to listen to his voice when He’s clearly saying to me: DON’T GET ON THAT HOVERBOARD!

Meet Cassidy, a.k.a. "Skye" (CNM #3)

Upper Right: Abigail Duhon ("Elle") Lower Right: Nick Arnold (onset Photog) and George Kosturos ("Galen")

Booger Crying. It’s not something we aim to do in public. Ever. It’s just too messy, especially for girls. At the very best, you end up with red, puffy eyes and snot leaking out, no matter how many times you dab. And at the very worst…wow…we’re talking a full-fledged Tammy Faye spectacle. Raccoon eyes, lines of tear tracks streaking down your cheeks, and random splotches of dried mascara that somehow ended up in the middle of your forehead and on the tip of your nose. And do I even need to bring up the awkward hiccuping and occasional snorts?

It’s a difficult thing to allow yourself to be that vulnerable in any space other than the privacy of your own bedroom. Under the covers. Face down in a pillow. So with that said, can you imagine having to open yourself up like this on a movie set? In front of a lot of people? Take after take?

Most actresses are unwilling to put themselves out there like that. A true booger cry is ugly, and no actress went into movies so she could look ugly in a close up on a 30 foot screen. It takes a very secure woman to do that. Or maybe one who is passionate about a cause. In our case, we got both in Cassidy Gifford, who played “Skye” in Caged No More.

I didn’t get to spend any time talking with Cassidy before we started filming her scenes, so I had no idea what to expect when I came to the set that day. As I watched her first scene as “Skye” with “Galen” (played by George Kosturos, whom I blogged about in my previous entry), I couldn’t seem to keep my mouth closed. I had that classic OMG bug-eyed, jaw-dropped expression as she and George connected immediately in such an intimate way. It was beautiful. She was beautiful…even with all the booger crying.

But to truly understand her brilliance, we need to go a little deeper. Cassidy hardly had any lines! It’s challenging enough to “get there” as an actor when you have a ton of emotionally charged words to pave the way…but to just pull that kind of response out of thin air is no less magical than David Copperfield on his best day. And then…AND THEN…(this is the point, if we were sitting at a table, I’d be talking really loud and leaning way too far into your space bubble) There is this climactic moment in the movie when she’s running and she bumps into **BEEEP** (sensor, so as to not spoil) and HER FACE as she expresses a windfall of different emotions…in a matter of, like, a second. How does she DO that?! 

There are no words. I mean, by now, I’ve seen the movie more times than I can count, and I am moved every single time by Cassidy’s performance. 

And yet…I still need to go on. When I spent time with this young woman, I was blown away by her kindness, humility, and grace. Kind to every single person on the set. Humility as she would get up early at the dinner tables so she could serve people by gathering their empty plates. Grace as she exudes that super quiet strength. The kind that at first seems fragile and then after a few minutes of real conversation, you realize there is an undercurrent of fierce strength in her character.

Maybe the thing I love the most is that Cassidy didn’t do Caged just because it was a cool gig. Cassidy and her mom, Kathie Lee Gifford, are freedom fighters. They’ve been involved in the fight against human trafficking for years, using their platforms to bring awareness and to end this horrific crime. On the final night of filming in Louisiana, she handed me the sweetest note, thanking me for writing Caged and for helping to create a project that was aimed at fighting for a cause she held so dear. She wrote that she considered it an honor to play “Skye.” Well, I’m sure I speak on behalf of all the producers and director when I say, “The honor was ours.”

Meet George, a.k.a "Galen" (CNM #2)

Left: George and Me (my only pic, and it's blurry!) Right bottom: Cassidy Gifford (Skye), Nick Arnold (on set photog) and George

Gotta tell ya, I agonize over coming up with character names. It’s the worst! I put so much pressure on myself to create the exact name for each of my creative darlings. Because the name has to fit. It has to have meaning. Sometimes I'm so stumped, I don’t even name a character for the first several pages, and they are given a big fat “X” as a name holder. Real personal, huh?

When I was writing Caged, it took a few hours of research (and much internal toil) in Greek names for me to know that the character “Galen” was, well, a Galen. The struggle was real, but finally I had found the perfect name! This name means “peace,” and derives from Claudius Galenus, a 2nd century Greek physician whose research laid the basis for accepted medical practices for 1500 years. 15 HUNDRED years. Because of his passion to bring healing, it effected the world for one thousand five hundred years.

In Caged No More, we meet a young man who is confronted with an unthinkable atrocity, and because of his integrity and his sense of justice, he is unwilling to look the other way. Instead, he spends all his personal savings that are reserved for his college education and risks his life to help rescue a girl being held captive in a brothel. My dream was that through the example of this remarkable man, the readers of my novel and viewers of the movie, would follow his example and perhaps be so motivated to bring healing to the real victims of human trafficking that their efforts of freedom would resonate forward for over 1500 years.

But if naming this character was so difficult, can you imagine how nervous I was about the casting?! Lisa Arnold, the producer and director, was so generous to keep me in the loop, and even, at times, be a part of some of the casting choices. But the find of George Kosturos was ALL Lisa, so when she called and said she’d found THE guy, I had to simply trust. The pictures of George were, well let’s be honest, he’s ridiculously charming. My hope was that this actor would not just “look the part,” but also be able to play what had become my favorite role. (shhh, don’t tell the other characters.) With Galen, there was a ton of emotion and depth to be exuded and not a lot of screen time in which to do it. It was going to be a big task.

I’ll never forget the moment I met George. How to describe him: the kindest eyes, the biggest heart, the most humble attitude, and filled with honest gratitude for being given the opportunity to play Galen. Oh, yeah, and all that ridiculous charm. Wow. This made me want to meet the parents of such an authentic young man. And really excited to see how he’d play on camera.

George nailed it. No wait. He didn’t just nail it. He mastered it. His portrayal of Galen captivated me with his sincerity, his broken heart to realize what Skye had been through, his deep need to help her, and his courage to stand up for what was right…even if it meant his own demise. George “got” this character and far surpassed my expectations. And to accomplish that, with such little screen time…impressive. I highly doubt this guy will ever have a problem getting more work. (Teaser: We have to make sure these movies blow up because you will NOT want to miss seeing how Galen’s character grows in the sequels). You can check out his upcoming projects at www.georgekosturos.com

George’s parting gift to me was a sweet letter letting me in on a Greek secret power of his. It’s a quality that Greeks claim as their own, and pretty much the quintessence of Galen. It’s the Greek word philotimo, and George embodies this quality. Google it, because it would take another blog to properly describe it. So now it was my turn to give a gift back to George. Because the scenes in Greece were filmed after the Louisiana shoot, I altered some of the script so that Galen’s family refers to this Greek super power, and George got to say these lines. He is, after all, the poster child for philotimo.

Let’s fill the theaters this weekend and go see CAGED NO MORE!

Have you bought the book, CAGED NO MORE, yet? You can do so HERE